Matter Smart Home Devices Dominated CES This Year – CNET
For the past decade or so, smart home tech has been about as prevalent as it gets at CES. That’s once again the case here in 2023, with the usual flood of new device announcements from brands both big and small (plus some weird and wonderful ones). This year’s crop in Las Vegas has something else, though: Support for Matter, the newly launched, open-source smart home standard that brings compatibility with Amazon Alexa, Apple HomeKit, Google Home and Samsung SmartThings within a single wireless protocol.
In other words, devices that work with Matter should work with just about everything, and at CES there are all sorts of new gadgets making that exact pitch. So, let’s get right to the new products that have caught our eye this year.
Samsung
Samsung SmartThings Station
Coming in February to the US and South Korea, the SmartThings Station from Samsung is a small-sized smart home hub for Matter-compatible gadgets. With built-in radios for Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, Zigbee and Thread, it’s capable of quarterbacking all sorts of gadgets at once, opening the door to automate them in the SmartThings app. You can also trigger any of your favorite smart home scenes by pressing, double-pressing, or long-pressing the button on top of the device. You can also program that button to make your phone ring next time you’re having trouble finding it.
On top of all of that, the device itself doubles as a 15-watt wireless fast-charging station, and it can even send you an alert when your phone or tablet is fully charged. Pricing isn’t finalized yet, but keep an eye out for it next month.
Read more about Samsung’s SmartThings Station.
Eve
Eve Energy, Eve Motion, Eve Door and Window, and Eve MotionBlinds
Eve was paying attention in 2019, when Matter was first starting to come together. After years of cranking out smart home gadgets built exclusively around Apple HomeKit, the brand decided to widen its appeal with a new focus on Matter, and it made sure to make all of its devices compatible with Thread, a Wi-Fi-based protocol capable of acting like a dedicated delivery system for Matter transmissions.
Fast-forward to CES 2023, where Eve rolled out a handful of new devices built to work with Matter right out of the box: the $40 Eve Energy smart plug, Eve Motion movement detectors and Eve Door and Window entry sensors that’ll each retail for $50, and a new $200 Eve MotionBlinds upgrade kit that’ll let you transform regular roller blinds into smart shades that you can automate and control from your phone. All of them are coming by the end of March, and all of them will work with Matter, which is great — but maybe more impressive is that Eve’s forward-thinking approach means that the majority of its previous-gen gadgets will support Matter, too.
Read more about Eve’s new smart home gear.
Schneider Electric
Schneider Home energy management system
Schneider Electric’s Schneider Home app offers a central place to manage the company’s collection of connected home energy devices, also called the Schneider Home line. A Schneider Home system can include a home backup battery, solar inverter, smart electrical panel, electric vehicle …….